


Payday!

by volus



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Gen, volus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volus/pseuds/volus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unlikely band of freelancing Volus mercenaries - a doctor, an accountant, a hacker and one of the Vol Protectorate's own Grey Suit operatives - uncover a major breakthrough that could equalise the role of the Volus in the eyes of the council... just as it is snatched away. With the fate of the Vol-clan at stake, they must brave the danger, the political crossfire, and the ancient mysteries that made all the researchers on the project suddenly disappear. Moral drama, action, and great sweeping overtones of all-enduring friendship. Takes place in 2182.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! My name is Chai, and I began writing Payday! in 2013 after a particularly good all-volus platinum match of Mass Effect 3: Multiplayer and a killer ME: Pathfinder game where Litla had their beginnings, but got too caught up to continue and left a lot of content bar a few chapters unedited and unreleased. This year, in 2017, I'm going to be rebooting it because I replayed the trilogy and I deeply missed playing around with these characters and I loved their dynamic. I've comprised an entirely new, updated meta, written new characters, shortened chapters for better flow and made a far more interesting and convincing, more Mass Effect-y (in the sense of Karpyshyn's novels) storyline than there originally was going to originally be.
> 
> Please enjoy your time with Litla, Elera and Vindar! If you are Drew Karpyshyn please take 5 minutes to message me and confirm my volus as canon. love u xx

A cool, translucent mist blew through the decontamination chamber and out the door. The scent detected registered as economy-grade antimicrobials, detergents and airborne no-rub polish, and the uptight and jumpy salarian continued on his spiel as they stepped through the airlock of the docked freighter.

“This freighter, the Leciphax, was previously meant to be sold to a pair of quarians, but it has returned to our inventory, due to… unfortunate incidents on their part. They... what are you doing?”

Litla Nac lowered their omni-tool from one of the consoles and inhaled nonchalantly.  
“Please, continue.”

  
The salesperson sniffed as he walked over to the centre console. “We’ve already gone through the basic specifications. This ship has been brought up to Citadel space freighter licensing requirements. It is in near-new condition and has been fully serviced and detailed by our engineers. Its custom specifications, however, may make you a target outside of Citadel space, if you intend to venture that far.”

He opened a panel and a holographic display lowered to his eye-level and turned to face his customer. “In addition to its unusually heavily reinforced hull, it is equipped with economy-grade dual mass accelerator cannons, on either side. This has discouraged previous potential buyers, but they are also well-hidden within the hull. Only the heat emissions while the cannons were fully powered could give you away as an armed vessel. Otherwise, mainly indetectable.”  
“And the FTL drive?”

“Very good condition for its use. The extra armour plating does reduce the FTL fuel economy, but out there, safety is priceless, don't you think?" The salesman smiled. It just barely convinced Litla, but they'd already made their mind up. "Would you like to see the purchase paperwork?”

Litla Nac looked over the salesman’s form, glanced back, and answered. “Yes. May I examine the ship a little more first?”  
“Of course,” the salarian chirped nervously.  
A loud clang came from below their feet, along with a hiss of leaking gas.

“Oh, of course,” the salarian rubbed his thin neck, “There is... something that comes with this ship.”  
The volus crossed their arms, displeased, following the salarian into the elevator. They knew this was too good to be true.  
“This ship comes with... engineers. It is a refurbished Blood Pack smuggling vessel that was sold to us some time ago, but its engineers are trained to handle this ship and while... helpful, they have been overall very difficult to remove.”  
There was loud, unintelligible and raucous speech coming from outside the elevator door.

“Jarr get leak! Jarr get leak!”  
“Jarr too tired. Nask get leak.”  
“No! Nask got plasma vent in face last time! Want to see Jarr’s face, melted!”  
“Hyaaaaaghh! No more! Nask get leak or Jarr keep you up for days with clanging!”  
A loud shriek echoed up onto the deck, followed by a few loud clangs.

The vorcha didn’t even seem to notice them as they argued until the salesperson cleared his throat impatiently.  
“Jarr, Nask. This is the potential buyer of the ship.”  
The vorcha lifted their masks and squinted through their goggles before the taller of the two approached with unusual composure for a vorcha.  
“Jarr at service. Little brother Nask too.” He cocked his head over at the other vorcha with bright orange scarring across the right side of his face. “This our ship. You buy, you feed us, we keep ship running. You not feed us, we eat you instead.”  
This was surprising civility from a vorcha, Litla noted. “Thank you.”

Jarr and Nask continued squabbling until after Litla and the salesman had stepped back onto the service elevator and wandered back to the airlock.

  
“Will that be all?” The salarian paced around the dock, inputting the new ship data into his omni-tool.  
“Yes, thank you. The credit transfer should have completed just now.”  
The salarian handed over the command chip as Litla’s omni-tool started to buzz. They opened the comm link up to the ship.  
“Vindar, I bought the freighter. Better deal than what we first thought. You can come in with the corvette now and install that salvaged environmental module. Docking bay F32. You’ll be right next to us.”

“All right. I’ll arrange the transfer.” Vindar spun around in his chair in the cockpit and directed the hired krogan movers down the end of the ship. He opened another comm and barked into it. “Elera, the movers are here, can you direct them?”  
“Elera? You there?”

Elera was a remarkable example of the successful self-directed volus. She was younger than her comrades, but no less formidable. She’d been compiling intelligence for the last few hours and peppering Citadel Control with backdoors to sell to Barla Von - her hacking expertise had paid for a large chunk of their new ship.  
However, she was entirely immersed.

The krogan knocked on the wall and she inhaled noisily, startled, before wobbling and almost tipping her chair over. She turned around and looked up, flustered.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” she told the krogan before replying to Vindar. “I’ll direct them now.”  
“Sorry about that. I, um...” She examined the room, indicating to the roller-doors leading to the specialised quarters. “We’ve depressurised and vented the atmosphere from our quarters and replaced it with a more convenient and accessible one for you, it’s safe to enter. You could start by carrying the lockers over. Everything else is in crates by the airlock, apart from my console here. I’ll start disassembling it now. Thanks.”

The krogan looked over at the gargantuan console behind Elera, looked back at each other, and shrugged. They were going to need another pair of hands.

Elera saved the last of her work for the day, rose from her seat and leant on the wall of the tiny vessel. How had they worked out of this tiny corvette for so long? There was barely twenty metres between her console at the rear of the ship and the helm. Three crewmembers and a VI she’d programmed herself wasn’t much to operate with, by most peoples’ standards. They’d adapted it to be fast, sturdy and liveable.  
She looked into her spartan but homely quarters. She wasn’t used to being inside her suit in there with all of her possessions tucked away in a locker. She’d miss this little room.

She heard footsteps behind her.  
“I’ll feel the same way.” Vindar’s breather rattled as he sighed thoughtfully. “It’s going to be an odd thing, being on such a large ship. By comparison, I mean.”  
“I’ll probably miss this one for a long time.”  
“Yeah.”

They opened the rest of the shutters to let in the movers, who were returning from the freighter. They were working surprisingly quickly. One moved to pick up a large, green crate by the centre console.

“Oh! Please be careful with those. Very fragile.” Elera said as she jumped, startled by a dropped bolt. Vindar picked it up and put it back in the box on the bench. The chassis of the console came apart easily, and it folded away into the bottom of the anti-static lined blue crates, each at least four times Elera’s size.

Elera then one by one disconnected all of the lines leading into the ship’s computers, leaving life support docked to the native port, and dumped the mass of fiber optic cables into the box before clamping it shut. She flicked a few switches and the floor lighting replaced the overheads.

She felt a rush of nostalgia and sentimentality toward the ship and smiled to herself beneath her suit. This would likely be the last time she’d ever see it as it is now. The ship dealer gave a small discount for the trade because of the modifications - a travelling clan would pay dearly for a budget ship with a modified atmospheric generator capable of producing a highly pressured environment suitable for living without suits. She and Vindar had put everything into this ship.

She stroked the wall near the hold affectionately as she opened up the airlock to leave and hoped it all was worth it.


	2. Loose Cannons

Elera had almost finished adjusting her systems but Vindar was climbing the walls, itching to get going. Almost all of their clients were looking for contractors in Aru and the good assignments wouldn’t be there for long.

“How long are you going to be?” Litla inquired. The speed at which they’d set up was commendable, but crates still littered the main deck and Vindar was shuffling about organising them.

Elera looked up as she tinkered. “About twenty minutes and we’ll be in the air.”

“When are we gonna get the environment running, Litla?” Vindar asked as he secured the green crate to the wall and cascaded it for display, showcasing their small selection of scaled-down weapons, small enough for volus hands to hold.

Litla sighed and leaned back. “Oh. I forgot to mention. The ship came with engineers. They’ll need a day or two to adjust so we’re transitioning over a three-day period. It won’t kill them.”

“Wait, adjust? You mean to say that there are vorcha on the ship?” Elera expressed in a furrowed tone.  
“Hold on, I’ll get them up here.” Litla opened the ship’s intercom. “Nask, Jarr, can you come up?”  
A loud clang coincided with the shudder of the elevator.  
Vindar chuckled noisily and glanced over at Elera. “You know vorcha engineers are some of the best. Don’t get squeamish.”

Elera looked uncomfortable as the elevator doors opened with Jarr and Nask stepping out between them.  
They paced around quickly, seemingly excited to be reemployed. Jarr sniffed at the air before looking down at Litla. “Hah. So you ship captain now! Air stinks, we manage.”

Nask strode over to Vindar and looked over his shoulder at the crate of spare parts. “Hah! We take these. We can use anything to make anything.”

Vindar snorted. “Could you build us a monument to vorcha ingenuity that can also be used as a bludgeoning weapon? I’d like a break-in-case-of-emergency hammer for the cockpit windows.”  
Litla and Elera giggled. Nask shrieked with laugher.  
“Naaaaagh! Nask shows off. Good meeting you!”  
The vorcha both grinned with their enormous, long row of teeth in what Litla interpreted as a rushed but friendly gesture - an unnerving sight. Their red-brown mouths gleamed in the bright white light.  
“Well, thanks.”  
They left as quickly as they entered and a stunned silence fell even faster.

Litla cocked their head at Elera. “See? Politest vorcha I have ever met.”  
Elera inhaled sharply and replied sarcastically. “Maybe they were employed by Blood Pack dignitaries. I’m going to go and wipe the ship’s registry.”  
“I’m going to look around, and if I find Blood Pack doilies, you both owe me 200 credits,” said Vindar enthusiastically, removing panels from the walls, replacing them, and opening maintenance shutes and looking inside.  
Elera went back to her console and began interfacing it with the ship’s systems. Litla walked over to the engine control panel and began inputting all the new security codes to begin the drive core initialisation.

“Alright. Main drive core online. All systems nominal. Vindar, get up front if you’re so excited to fly this thing.”  
Vindar chuckled and tottered off to the front of the ship as the walls and floor started to hum. This was really, truly exciting for him. He’d spent years piloting that tiny ship of his, barely twice the size of a fighter and slow, and though he’d miss it, this was a vast improvement. At his short stature, the ceiling seemed to stretch to an impossible height.  
He plonked down at his new station and opened the shutters. The hum became a steady pulse as he powered up the thrusters and opened a comm channel.

“Citadel Control, MSV Leciphax requesting permission to enter outgoing civilian transport lane B8-112-75.”  
The voice of a female turian piped through in response. “Citadel Control to MSV Leciphax, permission granted. Fly safely.”

Litla approached Vindar and looked out the real reinforced-glass windows of the cockpit. Technically speaking, with exterior cameras and simulated windows, anyone would think this freighter was a little outdated, but it was freshly cleaned and polished and the masses of ships all flowing in streams of light through the hundreds and hundreds of ingoing and outgoing lanes - transports of every size, shape and purpose - was inspiring.  
Beyond the safety in the arms of the Citadel lay a great expanse they never quite became used to being in, and in that expanse they went unnoticed.  
Space, although a commonplace, was no less terrifying.

The train of thought was interrupted by Vindar.  
“That’s odd. We’re being hailed.”  
The comm crackled before hearing the voice of another volus clearing his throat.  
“Civilian freighter Leciphax, this is Citadel Traffic Control. My scanners don’t appear to be malfunctioning - are you certain you are in the right lane?”  
The two volus exchanged a puzzled glance.

“We’re a civilian transport. We were told to enter this lane.”  
“I apologise, but please pull over at the next emergency stop for an inspection.”  
“All right.”  
Litla looked confused and worried. “I wonder if it’s about the cannons.”  
Vindar inhaled sharply. “Cannons? You can’t enter the civilian lane with an armed ship!”  
Litla looked down. “Oh.”

The ship quieted as they pulled into the bay. The airlock made another familiar hiss and clunk as the ship joined with the dock and footsteps sounded from outside the door.  
A muffled inhalation and raised voice sounded as the officer walked through the door with arms crossed.  
He huffed, polite but displeased. “Who’s the owner of this ship?”

Litla walked over. “That would be me.”  
“Are you aware that it is illegal to take an armed vessel through civilian lanes?”  
Litla took a deep breath and feigned concerned surprise. “We just bought this used ship and were taking it out for fitting. We weren’t aware.”

The officer brought up the display of the scan on his omni-tool. “Unfortunately, my records say your ship’s ID is registered as previously being impounded for firing on civilian ships. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to come back to C-Sec. We need to run a background check on everyone on this ship. Three of you, am I correct?”

Litla breathed a heavy sigh of relief and turned to Vindar, who appeared irritated at the notion that they spent three quarters of the credit pool just to get their brand new ship impounded. “Of course. I’ll go get Elera. I’ll just be a second.”

They tottered off down the main deck and down the hall past the elevator into Elera’s workstation. Her console was fully lit up and buzzing at full activity. Elera spun around in her chair, looking worried. “What’s going on, Litla?”

“We got pulled over for the guns strapped on this thing and the registry wasn’t wiped. We’re going to C-Sec. Pull us some fake personnel records, plant them in C-Sec and lock down your console. You’ve got a few minutes. I’ll close the displays.”  
She seemed shocked for a second but then returned to her console and began to work quickly, jittering and humming. She had always worked well under pressure.

They lowered the holographic display controlling the crate cascade displays and set them all to collapse and lock, before waddling back to the front of the ship.  
“She was just calibrating the environmental suite to something more suitable. She’ll be up here in a minute. It’d be a little more comfortable to travel suitless, we thought.”

“Pressure-appropriate habitats are being gouged all over. Last week we found a small clan living out of a freighter in the dock. Sleeping in crates.”  
“Nala Bon, by the way.” He extended his hand outstretched, but slightly tilted. That was the interclan greeting on Irune, but offworlders and citadel natives had variations. He was tall for a volus, and strangely friendly for a C-Sec officer. Vindar and Litla placed their hands on his in turn as Elera came toddling up to the front of the ship with her omni-tool still glowing.

Litla seemed pleased with how friendly the officer was. “I’m Litla Nac, this is Vindar Zel, our pilot, and right here is Elera Vor, our...” they stopped to think. “Multi-tasker. Ready to go, then, Elera?”

Elera nodded and opened the airlock to let Nala Bon back through. Vindar locked the cockpit console and followed behind his shipmates out the door and into the officer’s patrol skycar.  
“Hah, what are these?” Vindar poked at the bumper stickers on the back of the seats.

Nala laughed and looked back at them. “Oh, those? Just a souvenir. Went to see a spectacular meteor shower on one of Doldit’s moons a few years back with my brothers. Lasted for days.”

“Wonders of the universe, huh?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

The skycar drifted to the left and entered into a tunnel. The faint pulses and blips coming through the radio dimmed to a buzz and a comfortable quiet fell over the car.  
Suddenly, a loud keen came through the radio and a set of coordinates appeared onto the windshield.  
“Agh, shit,” Nala muttered to himself.  
He looked into the back seat at the three of them. “I can’t turn around here to drop you off. You’re gonna have to hold on.”

He shook his head as he steadily pulled straight upwards on the throttle as they exited the tunnel.  
“What?! Where are we going?!” Vindar barked as Litla glanced around and out the windows, shocked. They were leaving the lane, and heading for the upper wards.  
Elera input the coordinates into her omni-tool and working quickly. She cocked her head, surprised and confused, and turned to Nala.  
“There a party you’re missing, officer?”  
Nala’s sense of seriousness did not falter. “No. There’s someone holding up a place and he’s already shot someone.”  
Elera’s omni-tool glowed brightly in the back of the car as she worked. She leant over to Litla and showed them the omni-tool display, where she’d typed a hasty message.  
“THE COORDINATES POINT TO FLUX. DO YOU HAVE YOUR ARM?”  
Litla shook their head. Vindar nudged them and patted his pocket. They were armed... for now.  
“I’M PUTTING A TRACK ON HIS COMMUNICATOR. HOLD ON.”

They all slid to one corner of the seat as Nala swerved haphazardly to a stop in the rapid transit dock at the wards. A click sounded as Nala loaded what seemed to be a pistol from his pocket and looked back into the car.  
“It’d be best if you’d stay here.”  
He slammed down the door and walked off as Litla looked at their friends in amused disbelief.  
“How about we have some fun?”

Elera tuned her omni-tool into the C-Sec private comm. It buzzed and crackled, the encryption weak enough to break through a little.  
“P... ne, o... two, coordin... roadcast to your om... ool. R... eat, priorit... one. Re... ux.”  
Elera huffed in frustration, tuning further. “I can’t get past any more of the encryption. They’ve updated and I can’t compensate. Argh.” She tried again and her breather hissed in frustration.  
“Hey, it’s alright. We’ll just get it from Vindar.” They opened their comm back up. “What’s going on up there?”

Vindar, among his kind, was considered to be quite average. He was of average height, average build. He had the stereotypical volus voice and mannerisms - one that, unless you were either in the field of finance or from a turian trading family, would come off as rude and blunt to most other species, no matter how polite you were. That made you a non-threat.  
Vindar could blend in.  
So while the crowds passed outside the closed entrance to Flux, Vindar slipped through the net and into a side corridor one floor up.

His bootleg black market cloaking device didn’t last more than a few seconds at a time, but that was all he really needed. He’d bought it and his now favourite gun for a hefty fee from an aged quarian exile, a tech trader on Omega - one that had reverse-engineered it from countless disabled geth units that had been wandering outside the Perseus Veil more and more often the past few years. He was as suspicious as any who’d heard the rumours, but at least he was reaping the benefits.

The crew was jealous, but Elera had already spent this year’s upgrade allowance on that behemoth terminal, and Litla on a prototype for an onboard softsuit class R kinetic barrier.  
He patted his pocket as he crept silently, invisible, into the clean-smelling keeper tunnel.  
He loved quarian technology.

His comm crackled with the interference of the electronics lining the sides of the tunnel and Litla’s voice came through.  
“What’s going on up there?”  
Vindar was now jogging at a reasonable speed through the vents. He dropped down a level and landed on the side cushions of his boots, making nearly no sound as he took the turn toward Flux.  
Vindar looked around and replied. “I’m almost there. Give me a minute.”  
The thermal sensors on his boots began to relay a warmth through to his feet. He must be getting close.  
He could now feel the vibrations coming through the tunnel and he came to a vent in the floor of the tunnel.

“Vindar, this is Litla. We need the door codes for the room the gunman is in. They just shot the negotiator.”  
“Shit,” Vindar muttered to himself. He could see the gunman’s head - it was a young salarian.  
He got down and let his omni-tool scan the door locks. He repeated the codes to Litla.  
“Gotcha,” Elera muttered through the comm. Suddenly, the door beneath Vindar slammed shut.  
“WAIT! NO! LET ME OUT!” The salarian banged his fists against the door. “LET ME OUT!”

Vindar took out his pistol and silently crawled closer to the vent. From here he could see both his tantrum and the C-Sec officers on the other side of the door dumbfounded by the now unresponsive door’s refusal to open.  
“Litla?” Vindar whispered through the comm. “I’ve got a clear shot on his head. Take it?”

Back at the car, Litla and Elera shared a worried glance. “Hold, Vindar. We’ll listen in.”  
“Alright, Litla, I’ll patch you through.” Vindar held his omni-tool to the vent, catching parts of the C-Sec officers’ conversation. Suddenly, a human burst in.

“I’ve got a report on the situation, sir. We found his personnel records. His name is Mena Rolun. He was a dock worker, fired last week for... antisocial behaviour.”  
Vindar spotted Nala, who took a look at the data. “Is that all?”  
“There’s something else, sir,” the human gulped nervously. “His family starved to death in the lower wards last week. They lived in the slums, sir.”

Nala looked indignant, then his shoulders dropped. He sighed heavily, taking a long look at the smears of bluish blood on the floor, then straightened up.  
“We’ll take him into custody when we get these doors open. Hurry up.”  
Vindar heard sobbing from the other side of the door. There was a snap, a hiss and a quiet alarm.  
The salarian blubbered, pushing the gun hard into his head. Vindar watched intently. The gun smoked and beeped at him. The thermal clip had stuck.

"Vindar? Vindar, come back. They can take care of it now. We're making the door shutdown look like a malfunction."  
He felt a great sense of relief in himself. Plenix did move in mysterious ways. He knew he would have taken the shot, but there was no reason to, now. He glanced back at the poor salarian, now laying on the floor, bawling, totally helpless.  
Vindar walked away.


	3. The Grey Suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 9/3/17 - Fixed a few minor grammatical mistakes and a misused pronoun. Thank my beta-reader!

Litla leaned forward in feigned confidence as Vindar shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. The C-Sec office’s bright lights were bothersome to him.  
Nala sighed. “You know, ever since the incident last year where a prank VI was released into Citadel Control, we’ve kept a log on the systems.”

“This is why we’ve detained your friend,” he indicated at a projection of the logs on his omni-tool. “It says she cracked the system, faked override codes and locked the door. Why would she have done that?”  
There was a long, long silence.  
Litla forced a guilty tone of voice, but it wavered. “You left your skycar radio on, officer. Wouldn’t you have shot that salarian if we hadn’t have delayed you?”

Nala scowled beneath his suit, and it showed. “That is true... but that can’t have been a fluke.”  
He leaned further forward over his desk. “You know, we’ve received a tip that a certain group of mercenaries are visiting the citadel. Something about... professional sabotage? Ring any bells?”  
Vindar’s annoyed squirming was reaching levels of uncharacteristic that even Litla was fighting the urge to reach over and calm him.

Litla took a slow breath. If it had been an officer of any other species, their bluffs would have had them released by now; but Nala was observant. He picked up on the body language and cues only another volus adapted to suit life could recognise.

They were prepared to take the risk.

"Alright, fine... you’ve got us. What do you want with us? A bribe?"

Nala chuckled. "You're wanted by a lot of people, you know. You can do better than that."

"We want to see Elera first."

Nala breathed and took a step toward Litla, staring them down. "I'm afraid that's not going to happen."

Great. The last thing they needed was some C-Sec traffic cop too big for his boots holding them up. They didn’t have the funds to bail Elera out, they were meant to recover the expense of the ship with the next assignment or two. Vindar was clearly thinking the same thing. He was going to need his blood pressure meds if this kept up any longer. Nala seemed satisfied with the lack of response. Vindar was close to exploding, but Litla held eye contact. Nala looked toward the elevator and broke the silence.

“Well... I'm not here to get you in trouble. Come with me."

What? Litla glared indignantly as they got to their feet. They'd all gotten so worked up.

"The Vol Protectorate has a few officials looking just for you, in fact. You ever met Din Korlack?"

Vindar spoke up. "Ambassador, isn't he?"  
Nala led them both into the elevator and set it to take them to the presidium.  
"Indeed. He sent me to look for what we were told was your merc beacon in the outgoing civilian traffic. I don't think you would have even been caught with the cannons in all the traffic, otherwise."

"So, the Protectorate wants to hire us?" Vindar inquired, now sounding a little more than keen as he stepped out of the elevator. It’d been awhile since officials had sought their services. They were usually well-paying.  
“It’d seem so. Can’t say I know much else.”

They walked the rest of the way to the ambassadors’ offices. Nala pressed the comm at the door - it was after hours.  
“I’ve got the team, Korlack. Told you we could do it.”  
The door opened as the ambassador stood to greet them. Litla hoped to themself that the ambassador’s reputation wasn’t as accurate as Vindar said it was.

“Oh, welcome,” he said cordially. Korlack was a heavy breather, Litla noted, a sign of age. “Take a seat. We’ve been looking for you for a while.”

The ambassador's office was small, stark, and shared. The larger panels required by the Elcor ambassador were dark in the other corner, and his assistant was out. Din Korlack opened the shutters, then sat down. The Presidium shone beyond the glass. Vindar flinched at the sudden change in lighting and shuffled his seat a way back as Din slid a datapad across the table to Litla. Litla perused it for a minute or two, then passed it to Vindar. 

  
“So you think there’s someone feeding classified research to an Earth-clan trade group for credits?”  
“That’s right. This trade group know the Volus will pay for this... tech. It’s not theirs to bargain over.”  
Litla leaned back. “So what do you want us to do?”  
“The mole is on the inside, but he’s the pet of one of our best scientists, Janru Mar. Janru won’t let any harm come to him. We have to make it look like an accident.”

“That’s where you come in.” Din put down the paperweight he was fiddling with. “You’re... specialists. You’re sent in to a conference they’re having. What they’re working on is a large project for an upgraded soft suit able to be mass-produced, with a large percentage of the expenses reimbursed by the Protectorate. These suits are a great contribution toward galactic inclusion. Freedom from the bulk and upkeep of these." He motioned toward his own suit.

"These Earth-clan want it so they can sell it back to us. It’s ridiculous.”  
“This... group, Ancro Trust, however, works off of Noveria, and are a sponsor. We can't prosecute them for profiting off of our work when they helped to fund it.”

Litla drew a deep sigh. “Sounds simple enough, but we can’t agree until the entire team is here.” They stared intently. “That means our engineer.”  
Nala stood again. “Ah, yes. Of course.” He toddled off and out the door.  
Din closed the door behind him with a panel on his desk.  
“Now, you know I can’t just send mercenaries by themselves to do work for us. We’ll need to send someone with you.”

Vindar interrupted. “Our work is delicate. We can’t just adjust to having someone else there. It’ll wreck our synergy.”  
Din chuckled. “Calm down. I’m not sending anyone incapable with you.”

Elera and Nala came back through the door. Nala drew her a chair and stood next to the desk. Vindar and Litla turned, their spirits lifted, grateful to see her back.

“The Vol Protectorate has selected a candidate to accompany you from its Grey Suit program. This is confidential information, but they are your potential employers, so we’re obliged to share it with you before you enter into a contract.”  
“Grey Suit, huh? Interesting.” Litla said, with an audible smirk.  
“Told you.” Vindar murmured.

There was a silence for half a minute or so as Din Korlack typed intently on his console. Vindar was becoming impatient, and he got to his feet. It was not an impressive sight. “Come on, enough of this. Who is it? We’ll need to run them through our procedures and protocol, give them temporary and limited access to our resources, all that. It’s hard to do things like that with a client.”

Din reclined in his seat with visible confidence. The wheels squeaked. Litla had the impression he figured that the credits would win them over no matter what. With Vindar present, that was fairly likely.  
“Well, you’ll be happy to know that your companion is close by. This Greysuit agent commands great skill with weapons in addition to training in persuasion and tactics. He was top of his class in 2174, and not only that,” Din continued, “He also tracked you down and brought you here.”

  
The three volus’ heads turned simultaneously in similar disbelief at Nala, who crossed his arms and leant against the desk. He looked smug.

Din cleared his throat, gaining back the attention of the three.  
“Do we have a deal?”  
Litla looked around at his team. “All in favour?”  
Elera spoke up for the first time since she’d returned. “It seems easy enough.”  
Vindar nodded in agreement. “I didn’t like seeing Elera arrested. I don’t trust you, but if you can follow Litla, come along.”  
Nala ignored him. “Did you know there are vorcha on the ship?”  
Litla turned to face Nala as Vindar and Elera asked Din about some of the finer details of their new assignment. "Of course, they're engineers, they came with the ship."  
Nala sniffed uncomfortably. "I hope we won't be sharing living quarters.”

Litla shook his head and laughed quietly, looking up and out at the simulated Presidium sky. Nala was an ally for now. Now if only he'd live up to what Din said, this mission would go along just fine.


	4. Interlude

Vindar thoroughly enjoyed the ship. Its hum was strong and quiet - he felt it through his feet. The atmosphere was almost done adjusting. The life support panel on his right side, beside the altitude controls read that on the deck and quarters, the temperature was currently sitting at 10°C, and the atmospheric pressure at 15.72 standard atmospheres. It’d be forty-two more hours until they’d be able to live suitless again. Couldn’t be too careful with older components. Aged thermal pipes were known to crack under the smallest environmental stresses.  
He would be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to it. His suit was getting older, and he hadn’t told Litla, but it dug into his back. They worried about him more than they let on.

It was a short trip to Noveria. The vorcha were already complaining about how the temperature from the deck was seeping down into the engine. Litla tried their best to explain that the worst of it would only occur were they to come up to the deck, where the exposure would be nasty, and even as vorcha, they would need intensive care, and Litla wouldn’t have their little makeshift medical bay set up for another few hours. Volus were most comfortable below water’s freezing point, which was only one thing that made cohabiting with non-Volus impossible... at best.

As the ship approached the Widow relay, everyone felt the ship begin to shudder. It was a homely and familiar feeling if you’d spent your entire life only living on secondhand ships, civilian transports, retired corvettes, impounded freighters. If Vindar were anyone else, he imagined he’d be waxing poetic about the nimbus and the odd patterns in which the dust swirled, caught in the relay’s envelope while drifting soundlessly through the vacuum. Instead, he scowled beneath his suit at the helm and grumbled as the front of the ship began to gather the drifting emissions of other engines, like the space equivalent of smog on twisted low roads below the massive skyways on Illium. For Vindar, hazard rating two smog was home sweet home, and it was not very enchanting.

While thinking so deeply, however, he didn’t hear the light steps or the door opening as Nala walked in, breather muted, and stance relaxed.  
“I don’t like Widow. Very pretty, but it smells off.”  
Vindar didn’t like him, but he had to agree. He nodded in silence.  
“Were there ever to be a disaster, this place would be the last to feel it. That’s uncomfortable,” Vindar replied, checking the velocity at which they were approaching the core of the relay, “It’s alone out there. Not as safe as it pretends to be.”

Nala leant on the wall near the atmospheric controls. “We’re adjusting to suitless? That’s great.”  
Vindar chuckled quietly and swiveled back around. He had a few minutes to chat before they hit the relay. “Yeah. Jarr and Nask aren’t really enjoying it though. They used to have free roam.”  
An awkward silence fell.

Another shudder took the ship. Vindar spun back around, relieved to cut the dialogue short and began working at a great speed, muttering to himself as he did.  
“Five kilometres to hit, auto-adjusting velocity, set drift to... hmm... alright, two point five to hit, aaand...”  
Everyone on the ship felt the familiar jolt of passing through the relay. Nala never quite got over the feeling, like his bowel just took one of those complicated Thess-clan dance classes with its legs tied together.

Back in the anterior of the ship, with blue and white crates stacked as high as the ceiling and in a nook between them like a small room, Elera and Litla were reeling from the jolt, the only interruption from the disagreement over choice of credentials.  
“I think environmental engineer sounds good. We can already fake our credentials.”  
Litla sounded as if they were frowning. “Bio-environmental engineer sounds kind of pretentious, though. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound quite right.”

Elera spun around to face them, visibly annoyed, and indicated to the monitor hooked up to her terminal.  
“Do you see what that says, Litla? It says, Lenos Academy, Biological Research Branch. That is a fake copy of a legitimate certificate. A certificate in bio-environmental engineering.” She put more pressure on those two words than there was on all of Yan Tao.

Litla spun at the table idly. “Fine, fine. You don’t want to change half of your briefing package. I get it. Certified environmental engineer Litla Nac prepared for briefing.”  
“Did I miss the briefing?”

While they’d been talking, Nala had somehow crept in unnoticed and was looking over the larger monitor at the progress. He leaned against the makeshift wall.  
“Well, no, we’re just organising the package. Elera’s great at it. Compiles the whole lot really quickly, has us planted within hours. She’s a genius, really.”  
Elera huffed proudly. The console beeped.  
“Alright, it’s ready.” She hit the intercom on the wall. “Vindar, I’m sending the briefing package to your omni-tool. Please make sure you watch it all this time. We don’t want another Oma Ker incident.”

Vindar’s response over the intercom was barely stifled laughter. There was a blip of a terminated connection. Elera put her face in her hands, then resumed typing.

Nala paused and stretched before beginning to dissect the contents of the briefing package. He looked up at Litla, who was doing the same, sat up on top of a crate.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what was the Oma Ker incident?”

Litla looked at Elera and Elera looked right back, amused. Litla put down their omni-tool and span themself again, rested their boots on the table and cocked their head to the side in happy reminisce.  
“Ahh, yes. The Oma Ker incident, as Elera calls it. That was an assignment we had a few months ago.  
We had been hired by a well-known salarian breeding negotiator to liberate a large sum of credits that the owner of a large turian-owned casino on Oma Ker had somehow siphoned out of her brood’s emergency fund.

“In the end, it turned out to be a complete flop, because it ended up that it wasn’t even the casino owner’s fault, it was the manager’s, and we’d taken the wrong person’s money, but honestly...” Litla took a long breath. “We’d have left being paid if it weren’t for Vindar.”

“We’d been stationed as temporary staff for a large annual function. While Vindar stood guard posing as a croupier and myself nearby, Elera hacked into the vault and funneled the credits back to a dummy account, from which we’d send the money back to its original owner.”

“The game of Skyllian Five that Vindar was overseeing started to get intense. It was hard to watch. There were two asari, a... salarian, a krogan and a batarian. The batarian was keeping his head. The salarian was losing it, he was obviously new to the game. I couldn’t get a thing out of the two asari, but the krogan...”  
Litla paused and laughed softly, pondering on a choice of words before Elera interrupted, not even flinching.  
“This krogan was intoxicated.”  
Litla continued with their face in their hands. “This one krogan somehow got into the game entirely sober, and then suddenly, it hit him. He started wobbling around, giggling, talking too loud. He began shouting something about wiggly arms. Vindar asked him to quiet down. Then he tried to push him over.”

Elera turned her head and added in a low voice, “Even for a krogan, that’s a pretty big mistake.”

Litla nodded and continued. “So, in front of the whole crowd, this unassuming volus croupier had reappeared behind the krogan, and gave him a swift kick in his unprotected right side - the krogan’s only organ large and sturdy enough to not need a redundant system - the stomach. Everyone saw.”

“The krogan was so drunk he didn’t even realise until he’d keeled over and hosed the table and the floor with over a gallon of this... steaming slurry of ryncol, bile and whatever he ate before he came to the table. Then, he flipped the table, right on top of the two asari and the batarian.”

“Now, everyone was at least a little tipsy by now, so it probably tipped the odds in Vindar’s favour. Those asari turned out to be two rather unpopular Eclipse veterans, apparently enjoying a vacation until this happened. One of them just started yelling and put a singularity up over the batarian, who punched her in the jaw as she did so, just before he was lifted up off his feet. I think the other one kicked the salarian’s head so hard you could hear his left horn fracture.”

“Anyway, eventually the useless security guards had come over, and Vindar had put every single one of the others at the table down. Of course, they thought it was Vindar who’d started the fight - the volus thing wasn’t helping here, they’d already saw him fighting - so they tried to take him away.”

Nala shook his head. “I’ve never had an assignment go like that. It’s pretty clear cut with Grey Suit assignments.”  
Elera chimed in, mildly offended, peering at him from the side. “You think we’re unprofessional?”  
“No, no, just fortunate. It’s alright being in a special forces program nobody knows about, but nobody knows because nothing exciting happens. Work was pretty boring before I was asked to look for you. I chased leads for months.”

The three were silent for a moment before Litla continued.  
“Anyway, Elera had already finished, but now we had to go and find Vindar, who’d run off, with the entire casino’s security after us. Eventually we found him, having dropped half the guard, and we had to jump out the window to get back to our ship and fly off.”

Nala stared in perplexed confusion.

"I suppose it might be funny in retrospect, but Vindar thought it was hilarious at the time, too. He had a field day. You try telling him he would be paste on the wall if anyone else was wearing body armour, he won't listen..." Litla trailed off.

The floor of the ship shuddered. Vindar’s voice came from over the intercom.  
“Get the drop package ready, we’re entering the atmosphere.”

“Right,” Litla replied, getting to their feet and toddling over to the weapon cases.  
“What do you usually take, Nala?”  
“Uhh...” He swiveled in his chair to face the racks of guns and omni-tool modifications. “Shotguns, usually.”  
“We don’t actually have any of those.”  
“Oh! You’re offering me a weapon? No, no, it’s okay, I have my own.”  
“Well, you’re going to have to put it in the cache with the rest of our weapons. The port won’t let us take weapons through.”

Nala left briefly, and returned from his quarters with something long, bulky and covered in a soft, clean cloth. As Litla glanced over, packing the cache, Nala was placing the gun down very, very softly.

Hours later, Litla and Nala were watching from the side of the ship as the crate hurtled out the cargo bay door and into the flurrying whiteout below.  
“Is this standard procedure?” Nala asked, obviously taken aback by these three throwing their weapons in a box out the door.  
“Don’t worry, Nala, it’ll be fine. That box is very special. Orbital defenses won’t pick it up. It might just look like an old beaten up crate, but it was made for this. We’ll have picked it up again in an hour.”

Elera walked in and watched too as the ship dipped a little as they came down to land. Vindar was handling the ship incredibly smoothly for only having been piloting for a few hours in total, hardly having any trouble at all with the blizzard conditions as they descended into the darkness and quiet of Port Hanshan’s undercover dock.


	5. This Changes Everything

While Elera made final preparations, Litla looked over their tiny nook of a lab. They had replenished most of their supplies before they bought the ship - a great stock of medigel for volus physiology, as well as for any amino-chirality. Their tools - scalpels, steel and electric, calipers, suture needles sat in colour-coded magnetic squares on the wall for easy access. A powered microscope, electro-analysis suite and portable decontamination canister sat atop a small refrigerator with a safelock, stocked with medications. A wall interface, a datapad, a crate and a medical kit made the starkest possible desk-and-chair, but it was all they needed right now.

Tiny hands grasped interplanetary passes, nearly an entire roll of nutrient paste each, extra omni-tool batteries. They left the ship looking like a totally innocent freighter. Elera’s gargantuan computer running quiet and covered in crates, guns stowed away in crawl space in the hull, the plugs grudgingly pulled from the cannons.   
“Undetectable my suit.” Litla muttered as they all entered the customs lounge. “Damn salarian businessmen.”

“Documents?” barked a bored-looking turian from the other end of a customs booth. Elera stood up on her tiptoes and pushed a datapad through the slot. At this point even the most thorough checks wouldn’t get a thing past her as always. There was always that swing of satisfaction in her step as they were cleared through the checkpoint. It was endearing.

When they cleared customs, they began to walk a little slower. This was procedure, of course. They had good reason to be there. The trio walked on with Nala following some distance behind. Elera’s eyes traced a winding path along the ridiculously tall rocks lining the enormous hall. Chatter came from all around. The ceiling stretched up for what seemed like forever, the near unnoticeable patter of the snow on the glass thrummed like a soft heartbeat underneath every blurred word exchanged in the bored, anxious chatter.

The bright blues of the holographic displays were giving Vindar a headache, but he kept the grumbling to a minimum and clutched the case filled with fake documents of his fake degree and fake accomplishments and discoveries. He thought it was funny too, all the effort they usually went to. If he looked at his job like he was an outsider he’d probably be fascinated by all the fake things they had to create just to move on. If he stayed there too long he began to feel aimless, though. Even things that you can’t feel or see can have side effects. Like... like illegal, odorless, mood-altering gases.

By the time they’d toddled all the way to the garage, a representative was already waiting for them. Very orange twirly pieces of hair descended down her shoulders, and Elkoss Combine’s symbol gleamed on one side of the nervous human’s breast pocket, a name tag too high up to be easily readable, the words lost in the gleam. She bent her knees and extended her hand to each of them, shook them all briskly and began to recite a shaky welcome.

“You must be Malna Nem’s team. Thank you for coming to the conference.” She lifted the lock on the side of the transport and slid open the door. “I’m Trace, I’m here to meet the last of the attendees. Please take a truck. The locational guidance system has the route to the facility at Peak 29 already input, and the conference is being held in the hall.”

“Damn it.” Vindar cursed quietly. He was already trying to get inside. He kicked the side of the truck. “How the hell are we supposed to get in? Elkoss needs to stop hiring humans to save credits. They have no idea what they’re doing. This wheel is past my head! Where’s the ladder? A box to climb up on top of? Ridiculous. I hope I can reach the pedals.”

His shouts echoed through the garage and he shoved the toe of his boot into a dent in the side of the wheel and climbed up. The human frowned nervously. “I’m sorry, sir, these trucks are the only transport that can make it through the whiteout.”   
Vindar was no longer listening.

Nala followed and helped Elera up. Litla went last, less gracefully than the others. As they took their seat and strapped in, they looked over the face of the human for a second as she climbed into the driver’s seat, wondering if this was one of the humans from the trade group. The door closed by itself, the engine hummed into gear, and they shot off to the road outside the garage.

The snow beat against the side of the truck, and after a while, blurred into a thrum.

Coming up to the outpost where the conference was held, the truck began to shudder, then whirred quiet as they rolled into the garage. The engine powered down to a whisper and Nala rolled open the side door, Elera and Litla stepped out with all the materials under their arms.

Vindar yelled from the front seat. “I’ll just take a little scenic tour and then find a nice parking spot. Whiteouts... very nice. Interesting weather. Exotic.”

“He’s going to get the crate,” Litla told Nala. Elera was busy on her omni-tool. As they approached the wide door, another bored doorman, this time a volus, checked their passes.  
“You are missing one? The conference is soon. Please come with me and I’ll show you to the participants’ living quarters.” He said. “Please be aware that security is nearby at all times at this conference and we like to be made aware of any situations arising between guests.”

“Thank you,” Nala replied warmly. “Our peer will be joining us soon.”

Vindar at the wheel of the truck blazed through the whiteout, chuckling. If there was one thing humans could build right, it was a truck. He was climbing a rocky impasse toward the crate’s beacon with the help of the jets. This was going to be the easiest pickup ever.  
Setting down in the clearing the crate tumbled down into, Vindar hopped out the door, immediately felt the chill through his boots, and very quickly lifted the crate into the passenger seat, climbed back in, slammed the door, and headed back to the venue.

Back at the convention, Elera had found her people. This assignment, she was Aedi Yed, bio-VI specialist, and Litla hung behind her, very interested in the topics at hand. The scientists themselves were discussing between themselves, but revealing little. The room was filled with researchers - an even mix of Vol-clan and otherwise - mostly salarians, humans. Litla could see Nala’s eyes tracking the humans. Chairs circled around a stage and a large screen for presentations.

Elera whispered to Litla over the comm. “Why aren’t they revealing anything yet?”  
Nala came through too. “It’s the same over here. I can’t get a thing out of them. I bluffed and told them I’m a Grey Suit and a likely candidate for the results of this research, pretended I knew. They didn’t say anything different.”  
“This is a competitive place.” Litla sighed. “They know that uncharted territory is rife with plagiarism. Until they publicly announce their findings, they’re vulnerable.”  
“Ahh.” Elera nodded, looking Litla’s way, then Nala’s. “You know Litla was a medical researcher, right? They had their work stolen--”  
“Not now please, Elera.” Litla said, uncomfortable.  
Nala chucked over the comm. “Uncomfortable topic?”  
“Litla will tell you when we’re somewhere private, I’m sure. It’s a liability thing.”  
Another voice came loudly through the comm. It was Vindar.  
“Hey, anyone here? I think I went the wrong way. I can’t find anyone.”  
“One sec.”  
Nala activated his omni-tool on the other side of the room. A door opened somewhere to the left.  
“Oh... thanks.” Vindar stepped through into the noise. There was a clutter and footsteps, followed by silence. The lights dimmed, and people took their seats.

A volus took the stage and began to speak, and a title slide lit up the screen behind him.  
“My fellow researchers, pioneers of bio-science, Vol-clan, Earth-clan, Sur’kesh-clan. Thank you for joining me here today.” He paused. He was warm for a volus of science, and tall... for a volus of science. Litla looked over - Elera was already glued to the presentation, all six fingers fidgeting around, probably to set her visual input to record and transcribe.  
“My name is Jalpar Sot, and I am the project lead of this station where we have made this extraordinary breakthrough. Some of you know what is to come here, and some have no clue. Can I see a show of hands? Who doesn’t know?”  
A large majority put up their hands.  
“Figures they were fluffing around about knowing the project. Typical.” Litla grumbled quietly over the comm.  
Jalpar looked visibly pleased, clasped his hands together. “Well... I am going to be announcing the times of the Q&A Panel for the biotech, bio-AI and gene conditioning teams, but first, it is my pleasure to introduce you to something truly new in this galaxy.”  
Another tall volus with a different stance, confident, assured, fearless, walked slowly up the steps and into left-of-center of the dimly lit stage. Litla covered their breather with their left hand. The Volus on the stage stepped toward the center, the lights on their suit gleamed an Irunian-ocean ultramarine. Nala gasped.  
“That’s Dagni Sol, she’s another greysuit. She was in my class eight years ago.”

Jalpar continued with barely contained excitement.   
“I present to you... the galaxy’s first volus biotic.”

Dagni raised her hands and they glowed softly blue, shifting white. The sphere in the centre of the stage rose soundlessly and over the audience. The crowd was silent in surprise... or maybe shock. Litla was shocked too. This was an unbelievable, serious feat of engineering. Elera looked like she was about to explode. Nala was leaning forward, taking it all in. Vindar was asleep.

“This steel sphere weighs six-hundred kilograms. We have found a pathway through gene conditioning, VI assistance and amps built from the ground up, derived from surviving prothean adaptive bio-interface technology. The physical and nervous conditioning of our own Subject One, a seasoned operative of the Vol Protectorate’s special tasks branch has taken this project to the next level. Although the demands on the Subject have been strenuous, no longer will our species be counted out in times of conflict. Today, science turns the tide. The tide that will rise and carry us to the shores of galactic equality - the day for the Vol-clan has come!”  
The audience was silent, then suddenly roared with applause, as if the realisation finally hit them. A few in the crowd were looking around, and up at the sphere, bewildered. The volus researchers in the front row were almost standing on their seats. Vindar awoke suddenly and grumbled off-comm. Nala stood to his feet, his tone serious.  
“They’re going to kidnap her.”  
All three of them looked to him, surprised.

“You all need to arm yourselves right away. Vindar, did you bring everything through the door without the scanners like I asked?”

Vindar was taken aback, and visibly groggy. “Yes, yes. They’re in my side pack. Here.”  
Among the crowd, nobody saw the exchange of folded guns. Litla frowned beneath their suit.  
“Vindar, I’m going to give you a stimulant. This is no time to be resting.”  
“I’m sorry. Look, it was nice and dark...”  
“Come on, open your auxiliary port.”  
Vindar groaned and obliged. Litla pushed their firearm right back down into their side-bag, and retrieved a small capsule from a dispenser, and pushed it through the port. It closed immediately. Vindar groaned again. Elera wasn’t paying any attention. She was fixated on Dagni’s feat of biotic control, that sphere slowly lowering back to the stage.

“Yeah, I’ll give you a stimulant, rah rah, that’ll teach me, I guess.”  
“Can you pull yourself together? This dimly lit room doesn’t feel like a good place to be...”  
Litla stopped. They could hardly hear anything past the noise, the celebrations and chatter of the researchers. Still, there were slow, rhythmic thumps coming through the floor. Footsteps.

Litla thwacked both Elera and Vindar over the backs of their suits. “Pay attention, get down!” they hissed over the comm. They ducked beneath the seats. The door at the back end of the hall opened. 


End file.
